Createing a carrier logo out of an existing graphic can be difficult. In this guide I will show you the tricks in photoshop that we use to make them.

I will be using AdobePhotoshop CS2 (if youd like to buy me CS3 I can show you in CS3 another time ) some commands and functions may be similar in other version of Photoshop or even the Gimp.

GRAPHIC CARRIER LOGO

STEP 1: Open Photoshop and click on File->New or Ctrl+N

STEP 2: Configuration (see screenshot below)

Things that need to be set exact are the red, then press OK

STEP 3: Zoom In
Click on the Magnifying glass in your tool bar

Click on your Work area a few times until you zoom in and can see well.

STEP 4: Getting your picture
This picture can be from anywhere. Iam going to use this picture and open it in photoshop

Of course i dont want all the excess things, just the logo of the windows. So, choose the square marquee tool from your tool bar. If you dont see a square, click down on it and hold until a menu comes out and choose a square.

Now make a square around it, by holding down in one corner and draging to the adjacent corner.

Now go to image->crop

You should now see something like below:

I only want the blue circle, so were going to have to do some tweaking. this can be done many ways, I will show you one.

First press ctrl+d to deselect the object.

Select the magic wand tool from the tool bar

Click in the black area of the image - if you get some of the blue circle, you may need to change the tolerance. In this case I set the tolerance to 40

You should then come up with something like this:

Inbetween the dotted lines is the area that is selected. so we want to get rid of that area and get it transparent. We dont have a transparent background to begin with, so we need to make one.

Click on the new layer button underneath the layer window

You will then have a new layer like this:

Next double click on the layer labeled background and you should have a screen that appears like this, just press OK

Now you have two separate active layers like this:

Click on Layer 1 and drag it below layer 0 so it looks like this:

Click back on Layer 0 to select it and highlight it

Yes that looks confusing, but thats whats needed
Now that we have a transparent background, anything we delete from Layer 0 will be gone and we will have transparency showing through. Go back to your image which should still have dashing/flashing lines, and press the delete key

When we look at it upclose, it doesnt look so great... good thing the icon is really small

First thing to clean this up is to select the elliptical marquee tool, its the same as the square or rectangular marquee tool, just hold down and a menu will appear like below, choose elliptical marquee tool

Make a circle around the windows icon, trying to avoid as much of the nasty bits as possible. THis can be tricky, practice makes perfect..

Once you have it pretty centered and good, press ctrl+shift+i this will invert the marquee. right now its selecting the good stuff, we want to select the bad stuff outside of what we selected, inverse will do that for us and give us this

Now that the outside of our good image is selected, you can press delete and get this

STEP 5 Combing pictures
Not bad. Now what you ask? well we need to get it into the carrier icon format, which is about 44x20 pixels. Remember that new file we created in step one, we are now gonna to move this object into that object.

Click and drag on your image using the move tool in the tool bar

Once you draged it , it should look like this, now your modified image is in the carrier logo settings image.

Now press ctrl +t this will give you the free transform tool

Hold shift and drag the corners inwards until the image is able to fit in the designated box. You may need to move it around and center it until you get it right in the middle. release and grab the middle to move the box around.

Once you have gotten it centered and in the box, press the check mark at the top tool bar.

You have completed your first carrier logo, now its time to save.

STEP 6: Saving your images
We will first save the white version that we just completed. Click on File->save as

Save in the Cphonedmg folder

Use the file name: FSO_CARRIER_LOGO.png (this is case sensitive)
Use the file format: .png
The click save

Another pop up will appear and say None or Interlaced, choose Interlaced and press OK

Step 8: Saving the other image
Follow the same saving procedures as STEP 6. go to file->save as

Save in the Cphonedmg folder

Except this time use the file name: Default_CARRIER_LOGO.png (this is case sensitive)
Use the file format: .png
The click save

Another pop up will appear and say None or Interlaced, choose Interlaced and press OK

Unlike the text version, we dont need to change our image because it will work on both white and black backgrounds, so we just need to make two files so they show up on both backgrounds. If our image was very black or very white, we would then need to adjust colors accordingly.

Thats it, youve done it, youve created a graphic carrier logo!

Please remember there are many ways to get this outcome, Ive taken you through one way to do it. The best thing to do in photoshop is to play, and learn through internet tutorials and other means. Tools such as the pen tool and color range can also do wondering and make difficult tasks a breeze. Try those tools out and play with them, get to know them.

If youve read this guide and my other guide text carrier logo using photoshop you are now armed with the tools to make anything you want! Be sure to help out the community, add to this techniques that I did not cover or make it easier. Good Luck!

When asked what he would say to the columbine killers, Marilyn Manson said, "I would say nothing to them. I would listen to what they have to say, because that's what nobody else did" from the movie Farenheit 9/11

I just made a carrier icon for my phone but it seems that RIGHT after the icon i see a clock icon...is there any way to get rid of that icon...it is overlaping my wifi/3g/E icon and it is starting to bug me...i was going to attach a picture but its REALLY bad and you can't really tell what it is so i am sorry i can not be much of help in that department. I am assuming that it is the clock that goes in front of the time, but on the video [ame="http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=pL3VaF3LnRY&feature=related"]YouTube - iPhone 3g Custom Carrier Banner[/ame] he seemed to do the same thing i did, but he did not get that problem T_T

Regards,
Strider

EDIT: ok i gave in and just posted the image...the only way i could even get somewhat of a clear shot is if i zoomed in all the way...sorry, its a philippino camera rofl

EDIT2: So it turns out that the little clock that was bugging me was my alarm to wake up in the morning...who would have guessed right? :-/ sorry for the dumb question